Correlations Based on CFD and Their Applications in Optimization for Staggered and Parallel Plate Fin Heatsinks

Both parallel and staggered plate fin arrays have shown promise for use in high performance heat sinks regard of its individual manufacturing costs. The geometrical and operational parameters are very important to their cooling performance as heat sinks in practical applications. Fluent 5.0 commercial CFD (computational fluid dynamic) code is used to simulate the flow and heat transfer of those heat sinks of different realistic parameters. Based on those simulations, two correlations, concerning Nusselt number and friction factor as the functions of geometrical and operational parameters, FB (fin-base area ratio), PR' (ratio of spanwise pitch tolengthwise pitch) and Re, were developed. From the both, the performance comparisons for optimizing geometrical and operational parameters of a fixed dimension heat sink are shown at constant pumping power and constant thermal resistance. Several optimized parameters were obtained can out perform the staggered ones.